Gonçalo Sena

Gonçalo Sena's solo exhibition Spine consists of a new body of works on canvas and sculpture. As the structural element that supports our thorax, as well as the central axis that holds together all the pages of a book, Spine gathers matter, forms, and strata derived from porous architectural features and coastal Atlantic landscapes.

The works evoke wind and body movements, erosion and transformation processes, through: ashes, bone, bronze, cement, charcoal, clay, concrete, copper fragments of sound cables, copper wire, electrical wire, glue, ink, iron, linen, a light bulb, paint, pigment, pine leaves, polyurethane, rainwater, sand, seashells from razor clam (Solen Marginatus), spine, spray paint, sunlight, tongue.

In dialogue with this exhibition, Sena made the scenography backdrop for Jefta van Dinther's Mercury Rising, premiering at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, on the 21-22-23 of November, 2025.

Gonçalo Sena (b. 1984, Portugal) works in the fields of sculpture, drawing, installation, and publishing. Using drawing as a starting point, his practice develops through material and spatial processes, resulting in sculptures, drawings, temporary structures, printed matter, site-specific interventions, and displaced environments. The vocabulary of each work and installation derives from an ecosystem of non-functional relations between everyday objects, industrial materials, and organic elements—all apparently immutable, yet all in constant transformation.